GreatCall: Reviews and Company Overview

GreatCall is a well regarded leader in design of senior-friendly products, and makes the popular Jitterbug phones, as well as the Lively Mobile Plus mobile emergency alert pendant.

The 5 star response services that work on each of the emergency devices above can optionally include some very interesting services that go far beyond the traditional emergency responder service. These extra services include 24/7 access to a doctor or nurse, and use of a caregiver connection application called GreatCall Link.

GreatCall owns and runs its own responder center (they call them a Caring Center). In an interview, GreatCall emphasized several aspects they believe are important aspects of a good emergency response center.

1. Well trained responders. GreatCall tells us that all their responders have NAED certification (National Academies of Emergency Dispatch). And the customer service representatives that help with purchasing and technical issues undergo a 6 week training course.
    
2. Speed of response. And in our tests of the Splash and the 5 star App, response time was consistently the fastest of the tested products.
    
3. Speed to pop up the location on the screen of the responder. 
    
4. Redundancy of the responder center (GreatCall has two fully redundant Caring Centers — one in California and one in Nevada).
    
5. Carrier coverage (ie the products will only work in places where the carrier has coverage so the broader that coverage is the better). GreatCall products use Verizon as the cell carrier.
    
6. Data privacy.
    

In addition to its line of emergency response system producst, Great Call also has several interesting services that can ride on top of its hardware products. We recently took a look at the medication management app called the Med Coach.